Wednesday, February 1, 2012

As you may know, I was originally trained as a Solar Engineer (solar water and air heating). In the early 80's, we learned a lot of things on our own because:

1. Manufacturers supplied only components, not complete systems.

2. Because every house is different, every installation is unique, causing mistakes and "issues".

In my opinion, the solar water heating industry has still not matured. Because systems currently cost too much, they aren't being installed as often as they should (which is on every house in the Denver area). For high volume uptake to occur, NREL says the installed price needs to be between $1,000 and $3,000, not the $6,000-$11,000 that you typically find.

Recently, I've been back to learning things on my own, and collaborating with folks like genius Steve Baer.
Some of us have been working on solar system simplification. One simple domestic hot water system that has tested successfully is depicted in the video on YouTube below. If your house has the right configuration, I can install this system for you for $1850-$2600 with a 5 year warranty. It may be simple, but it requires some high tech to succeed. The collector we must use has the lowest heat loss coefficient of any mass marketed panel.

About Me

He received a BS in Engineering Physics from the Colorado School of Mines in 1977. During the country's first Solar Era, he received an MS in Mechanical Engineering and Solar Technology from CSU (1979) After involvement in hundreds of solar thermal systems in the early 80's, he received several product design patents. The focus of this blog is low and zero energy home design and construction for Denver.